Coolest Mario Birthday Party Ideas

Since both my middle and youngest sons' birthdays are in May and they shared the same Mario obsession we decided to have a Mario party for both of them together.

Mario Birthday Party Invitations:

Ben (turning 7) wanted to help make his invitation. Step by step we made the Mario party invitation together using Paint Shop. We started out with a picture of the characters from Mario Party then added on the party info. Then Ben came up with the idea to add hidden pictures. We used the paint tube tool to add little pictures of a party hat, present, etc into the picture and added a list of items to find with the words "Can You Find These Hidden Pictures" above them. Then I printed them out folded in half closed with a star sticker and gluesticked a Mario star on top. I wrote To:____ and From: Ben on either side of the star. Since the few people (mainly family) invited for my 3 year old would also be invited for the 7 year old I just made an insert for his invitation. I made it slightly smaller then half the size of the bigger invitation. On it I cut and pasted his face to a picture of Mario flying on Yoshi. Then I put "Yipee! Jake is turning 3! Then added the info below. I printed and cut these out and slipped them into the bigger Mario birthday party invitations.

Mario Birthday Party Decorations:

For Mario birthday party decorations I mostly used leftover crepe paper balloons and cut out pictures of Mario characters that my children had drawn. I also bought one bag of mixed balloons at the dollar store.

Above the fish tank I hung a banner leftover from a firetruck birthday. Between Happy and Birthday it had a framed circle with a picture of a firetruck. I cut that circle out and pasted a piece of black with white stripes paper into the frame. Then I made an oval on my computer with a picture of Mario and Luigi on it added both boys names and little red 7's and green 3's all over and glued that on top of the b/w paper. I had two round table covered with light green with darker green vines tablecloths. On each one I put three little pots that I had painted green. In the center of each one was a piranha plant. I just made these from construction paper using a green k'nex toy for each stem. I secured them with clay. Besides the piranha plants there were craft supplies for the coin collector decorating. On a wall beside the tables I made a Mario birthday party scene. I put a brown with yellow and orange squiggly line border along the bottom of the wall. Then I added a big vine on one side leading up to a row of clouds from one side to the other. I wrote Happy Birthday Ben & Jake on the clouds. I taped coins in a row above the clouds. Above that I added two clouds with faces. Then I had three little rows of brick blocks. It was finished off with Goomba Mario Luigi Latiku pipes a fire flower mushroom and chain chomp all drawn by my two oldest boys.

Mario Birthday Party Arrival Activity:

I always like to have an activity to do while we wait for everyone to arrive. They seem to especially like it if it is something they can use for the party. For this Mario birthday party we made coin collectors. I saved up 2 liter soda bottles, rinsed them out and covered them in plain printer paper. Then I cut a slot for coins in each one. I also painted the caps four different colors. (I used the bottle cap colors to pair them off into teams).

To decorate the coin collectors I had printed out coloring sheets of items from Mario games (star, mushroom, etc.). Then I cut out them all out and put them in the pockets of little Mario overall pockets I made by cutting overall shapes (minus the legs) out of blue construction paper. I cut the pocket shapes and glued on the bottom and two sides leaving the top open. Then I glued down two yellow foam circles for buttons on each one.

We have a big fish tank that sits empty on a bureau in my dining room. For the Mario birthday party I covered the bottom with gravel. There was actually colored macaroni mixed in with the gravel (by my 3 year old). It added nice color :) I printed out two Koopa Troopas four Cheep Cheep fish a flying Koopa Troopa and a star. I taped two strands of fishing line from one side of the fish tank to the other and taped the flying Koopa and fish so they were "floating" inside. On the back of the fish tank I taped up the star and a set of three coin blocks that I drew on brown paper. Then I stuck the two Koopa Troopas and all the characters for the coin collectors in the gravel so they were standing up. On the top front of the fish tank I made a small sign that said "Pick One" with an arrow pointing down. Everyone got to pick one character to add to their coin collector and I tried my best to refer to them as that character throughout the Mario birthday party.

Mario Birthday Party Game Play:

In the wii game Mario Party you roll a dice to move around a game board playing mini games to earn coins which you use to purchase stars. The person with the most stars wins the game.

I made a dice by covering a box with paper outlining the edges with blue painter's tape and drawing out the numbers and gluing to each side.

Our game board was different colored sheets of construction paper placed around my older son's car table. Also each corner was a DK mini game space.

I wrote the name of each mini game on a slip of paper and taped them all to a chalkboard. I wrote everyone’s names on little slips of paper and set each team's names in one corner of the table. Whatever team's color we landed on I picked a name and let them choose a game from the board.

For each Mario birthday party game every player got a gold coin and the winning team also got tickets. I painted the markers from an old Bingo game with gold paint for my coins but you can buy plastic or chocolate gold coins.

Mario Birthday Party Games:

DK Mini Game - For this Mario birthday party game I just cut a bunch of bananas from yellow paper and wrote a number from 1 to 3 on them. Then I buried them all in our lego table. If any team landed on the DK spot each member from that time got to find a banana and that's how many coins they won.

Scaldin' Cauldron - Scaldin' Cauldron is a Mario Party 5 game in which players hide in cauldrons. Koopa enters and blows his fire breath on one cauldron at a time until only one player remains.

For our cauldrons I emptied out four of my boys' toy bins. I lined them up behind the couch and taped black construction paper cauldrons with the letters A,B,C,and D on them and flames below them above each bin.

I taped four pieces of orange construction paper together with painters tape. On each one I glued on a cauldron cut from an old pair of black sweatpants. I used sweatpants because my "flames" were nerf darts that would stick quit nicely to sweatpant material. I painted the corresponding letters on these cauldrons and hung the finished project up on a door across from the toy bins.

I printed out a Bowser face from the Internet, cut it out, and attached it to a wooden stick used for mixing paint.

One person from each team climbed into a bin and then I as Bowser stuck a dart onto one of the cauldrons. Whomever was in that letter cauldron was out of the game. Then another player would go in and everyone would switch cauldrons. When only one team member was left that persons team won this fun Mario birthday party game.

Bob-bomb's Away - When I saw the Mario Party 8 mini game Bob-ombs Away, I immediately thought of The Price is Right game, Plinko. In the video game version 3 players stand on top of a Plinko type board dropping Bob-ombs down onto the 4th player. Our Mario birthday party game is a friendlier version in which a Bob-omb is dropped down the board to win points.

I started with a (free of course) box from Walmart. It was angled down on the sides. I lifted the front part of the back and put it down across the top angled down to the front. I attached this with a LOT of tape and covered in construction paper that I then decorated.

Across the top I put a section that had been inside the box to seperate the toys it once held. At the bottom I placed another free container this one from Pop Rocks Easter Eggs. I painted each cup of this container with point values in each one. I then stuck multicolored push pins all over for the ping pong ball (painted to look like a Bob-omb) to bounce around against.

I used what I had but you could also cut out your own piece of cardboard to angle down and tape a few paper cups together for the bottom. Each player was allowed to drop the Bob-omb down three times and then the teams total scores were added to determine the winner of this Mario birthday party game.

Breakneck Building - In this Mario birthday party game players compete to see who can paint a board, hammer in nails, and cut a big log first.

In our Mario birthday party game version of Breakneck Building we timed each team painting a "board", hammering in nails, and cutting "logs". The team with the best time won.

For the boards I cut regular printer paper in half and then rolled a brown crayon (with wrapper removed) across each one. Then I just drew on a little bit of wood grain detail. The paint was just a few drops of food coloring mixed with water inside of an old sour cream container. I taped a piece of paper that I had written the word paint on and attached a metal handle on top. The paintbrush was just a real paintbrush that I already had.

For the hammering part of the game I painted a box brown and drew on wood grain with a brown marker. I painted just the tops of nails to match each team's colors. I did six nails for each team. I pushed the nails all the way down to make sure they would be easy enough and then pulled them back up. The hammer was a plastic one from my youngest son's tool bench.

The logs were shaped from clay and then painted brown. I drew out a saw on an empty plastic bottle, cut it out, and painted with brown and silver paint.

The teams did this Mario birthday party game one at a time with each member painting one board, nailing in three nails, and sawing off one section of a log. Each team was timed and then the fastest time was announced at the end.

At The Chomp Wash - In this game, At The Chomp Wash, players have to wipe paint off of a big Chain Chomp.

In the Mario birthday party game instead of having one big Chomp for each player I made 7 small chain chomps for each team. I drew them all with white chalk out in my carport and put different colored spots on them to match with the team colors. Then I drew one large Chomp for each time to keep track of how many chomps they had washed.

I passed out a damp sponge piece to each player. Then they wiped away their team's chomps as fast as they could. The team to get rid of all their Chomps first won.

Shake It Up - One of my son's favorite Mario Party 8 games is Shake It Up. In this game each character shakes up a can of soda. The winner is the one whose soda shoots up the highest when they open the can.

Now while it's all very fun on a video game the logistics and potential danger of letting a group of children shake up soda cans is another story. This game made my son's list of top 5 Mario Party games though so I was determined to figure it out.

After thinking about it for awhile I suddenly remembered the Mad Science Halloween party we did last year. One of our experiments was The Sandwich Bomb. In it you use the classic combination of vinegar and baking soda to make a ziploc bag poof up. You just put a small ziploc bag of vinegar inside a bigger bag that already has baking soda in it. Close them both up, squeeze to pop open the vinegar bag and shake it up.

The only problem was turning it into a Mario birthday party game instead of an experiment. First I drew and cut out pictures of soda cans to glue onto the front of our sandwich size ziploc bags. Here is where it turns into a game, only some of the bags will have baking soda, the rest contain flour. (Powdered sugar is closer in color but flour works fine, especially since the bags will be out of view until the start of the game.) I filled my snack size bags with vinegar ahead of time but didn't put them inside the other bags until right before the party, just in case.

Everyone stood in a line and grabbed a ziploc out of a box or basket. On the count of three they pop open the vinegar and shake their bags. Whichever team has the most bags that poof up is the winner. Be sure to have one more baking soda bag then you do teams so you won't have to worry about doing a tie-breaker.

Fish Sticks - We made 4 magnetic fishing poles and Cheep Cheep fish with magnets inside them. The fish had numbers on the back to indicate point value and there was one gold fish that said "You get an extra turn". Each team member got to catch three fish (blindfolded) and then their points were added up.

Fishing poles were made from plastic sticks leftover from Halloween yard decorations, ribbon, bobbers made by tracing around a paint bottle and adding details with a red marker, and magnetic buttons.

I first bent the plastic stick, then made a hole towards the end using a thumb tack. I pushed the ribbon in and out the top with the thumbtack and then tied it in a double knot. On the other end I tied a double knot around one of the magnetic buttons and then glued a paper bobber to each side and glued the edges together.

The Cheep Cheep fish were made from construction paper and then glued to the front and back of magnetic buttons. I glued the button toward the top so that the paper could fold out that the bottom to help the fish sit upright.

Rumble Fumble - I printed and colored Shy Guys and drew a few Bob-bombs. They were hidden under A LOT of plastic cups. Many of the cups had nothing under them at all. The cups were all spread out in the middle of my youngest son's room.
One member of each team will run out and start lifting up cups until they find either a Shy Guy or Bob-bomb.

If they find a Shy Guy they take it, run back to their team, place the Shy Guy in their team's basket and tag the next member. If they find a Bob-bomb they leave it there, yell "Bob-bomb", and go tag the next member. I also put pieces of candy under a few of the cups. They had the choice to either keep the candy or take another turn.

They did this until all the Shy Guys were found and the team that had the most Shy Guys in their basket won the game.

Chimp Chase - For this Mario birthday party game I printed out a bunch of baby Ukikis (they are monkeys) in black and white and then colored them in in the four different team colors. Then I made four mama Ukikis from the four different colors of construction paper.

Then I cut out baskets from construction paper to hang from each mama's tail. I drew little x's on each basket to show how many babies each mama needed. I hung the mamas up on the wall. Right before the Mario birthday party game I rubbed a gluestick all over all the x's.

Then I scattered all the baby Ukikis all over on the ground and pointed a fan at them to make them blow all around. Each team had to run around grabbing their colored ukikis and add them onto the baskets. The first basket full won.

Paint Misbehavin' - This one was my three year old's favorite Mario birthday party game. We did it in the backyard and every time we pass the spot where we played it he says "that paint goombah game was fun".

On the wii version everyone shoots their team's paint color at a bunch of goombahs that are walking all around in the center.

For our Mario birthday party version, I painted gumdrops brown and added on faces to make goombahs. I raked pine straw into a big rectangular area and scattered them around inside it. In each corner of the rectangle was a small bowl of paint and an egg carton.

When I said go everyone grabbed a goombah and dipped it into their teams color, then added to their egg carton. I had added a toothpick to each goombah to make them easier and less messy to dip. Whichever team filled their egg carton with painted goombahs first won.

Aim of The Game - While I was browsing around on the Internet one day I saw something called a Pabitin. It is basically a big trellis with candies and prizes hanging down from it. It is held up high then moved up and down while all the kiddos below try to jump up and grab a prize.

It worked perfectly for Aim of The Game. In the wii version cards with different point value fall from the sky and you shoot at as many as you can to get as many points as you can. I made my own cards from paper and hung them from my homemade Pabitin.

To make the Pabitin I just laid two jump ropes down on the ground apart from each other then tied pieces of yarn from one to the other until I had a big grid. Then I hung down different lengths and colors of crepe paper. I punched a hole in each card and added a piece of yarn to each one then hung them all on the Pabitin as well.

At the party we held it up in the air and let everyone take a turn going under and grabbing cards until they were all gone. We added up the point values and the team with the most points won.

Playing all ten Mario birthday party games worth two big coins each meant we won a star. For the stars I printed and cut out stars and added numbers to the back. I put them in a magic bag that I found at a yard sale. There is a little thing you flip on the handle that makes it seem like the bag is empty until you flip it back.

I had everyone line up and told them they had to do silly little things and say "Okeedokee" (my son's favorite Mario saying) to make the stars reappear. When everyone had gotten their star it was time to collect the prizes. The numbers on the back of the stars determined who got to shop for prizes first.

Mario Birthday Party Prizes:

Instead of goody bags we had a candy store Shy Guy's Sugar Shack. I had found the best free boxes at target. They were red divided into 6 sections and said either wii or Nintendo DS on them. I bought a package of yellow paper sacks and made labels for them with a picture of a Shy Guy that said Shy Guy's Sugar Shack. I used candy leftover from other parties after holiday clearance and just whatever I found cheap. I put out little toy tweezers and mini ziplocs (from the jewelery/bead section) for the candies that were not individually wrapped.

As I said earlier, the winners in the games received tickets as well as coins. So in one of the boxes I put a sign that said These Candies - 1 Ticket each. The rest of the coins had signs saying the name of the candy how many coins it cost and on some of them I did put a limit to make sure everyone was able to get at least one. After everyone had a turn I gave them back their coins and let them shop again.

The candy for sale was:

Goomba Gum - little packets of Chiclets from the checkout at a mexican restaurant

Toadette's Tarts - giant smarties with hearts on them from after valentine's clearance

Princess Daisy's Fun Dips - valentine Fun Dips on the to and from I wrote You with a heart for the o and Daisy with a daisy for the dot of the i

Spikes - candy corn

Princess Peach's Fruit Salad - I bought one package of peach rings and one of fruit slices cut them up and put them in lil baggies

Bob-bomb's Butterscotch - glued lil bob-bomb's to the wrappers

Baby Peach's Fruit Jewels - hard fruit candies

Dry Bones' Bones - leftover Halloween bone candy

Birdo's Eggs - jelly beans DK's Root Beer Barrels - root beer barrels

Toad's Taffy - taffy with picture of Toad glued on

I made labels that said Shy Guy's Candy Shop and glued them onto yellow paper sacks for them to put their candy in. They went in three at a time. Those that weren't shopping picked out a drink and picked up their place settings.

Mario Birthday Party Drinks and Place Settings:

I cut out two big squares from posterboard painted yellow and painted on orange question marks to make question blocks. I taped them to the front of two small square end tables that were on either side of the dresser with fish tank mentioned above. On each table I put place settings for 8.

Napkins - I bought solid blue napkins and made Mario star napkin rings for them. I cut out strips of construction paper glued them into rings and glued on a star cut from yellow construction paper. I added eyes with a black marker. I rolled red forks inside the napkins.

Drinks - I made labels for Hugs drinks. I put a picture of a Bob-bomb and made a burst with the words KA-POW Punch on it. I arranged the drinks around a small pot that was painted green. In the middle of the pot was a k'nex stick with a Mario head on top (Luigi on the other table). Around that were the straws. I used striped red yellow green and blue straws. I cut mustaches from black construction paper made two slits in them and put them on the straws.

Plates - I cut two ovals from black plates and attached those plates onto white plates. This made Bob-bombs eyes. I cut a top and wick from construction paper and glued them to the underside of the top of the plates.

My dining room table has blocks of green on it so I did not even use a tablecloth. In the middle of the table I had two big green pots painted green. They each had 2 2-liters which I had painted mushroom faces on the lids of. In front of them was a small green pot with star glued onto the front. It held the forks and sat on top of the napkins. Along the front of the table I put white cups with Boo faces gluesticked on and plain red plates. On each end of the table was a big box I had covered with white paper and decorated to look like the Mario Party dice. One had 3 on the front and the other had 7 on the front. These boxes were placed over the cakes. I put a black and white checked flag banner around the front and sides of the table. I gluesticked mushrooms from coloring sheets onto it to make it more Mario.

Mario Birthday Party Cakes:

I made two Mario birthday party cakes, one for each birthday boy.

For Jacob I made a Mario Kart cupcake cake. I arranged cupcakes into a big circle and frosted them all together with green frosting. I used fondant to make a race track. I made Yoshi and Donkey Kong in little cars to place on the track along with a couple of banana peels and turtle shells.

I cut an oval shape out of a regular rectangle cake for Ben's cake. It slanted down on one side (honestly this was not on purpose but it worked out really well for me). I frosted the whole thing blue using a fork to poke it up to try to make it look wavy. I added a big piece of brown fondant to the higher side for the shore. In the middle I put a fondant Blooper and on the shore I put fondant baby Luigi, Peach, Bowser, and Mario. They each held a toothpick fishing pole with little fondant bobber attached.

I hope you've enjoyed my Mario birthday party ideas.

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